Selective plane illumination microscopy (SPIM) and related technologies employ parallelized excitation and perpendicular detection geometry to permit optically sectioned volumetric interrogation of living samples, therefore enabling the study of in toto development or neuronal dynamics at high frame rates. In most implementations, the SPIM system is designed around the specimen, thereby requiring novel sample preparation, such as embedding the sample in an agarose gel, which precludes the use of conventional sample mounts, such as glass cover slips, that are used with many conventional microscopes. Although other types of microscopy, such as oblique plane microscopy (OPM) use the same objective to illuminate as well as detect the specimen and can accommodate the above novel sample preparation, such a microscopy system suffers from a low numerical aperture relative to other methodologies, and therefore requires extensive optics to correct aberrations that result from the light sheet being tilted relative to the detection plane of the microscope. As such, it would be desirable to be able to easily convert an existing conventional microscope that can accommodate novel sample preparation while providing the benefits of selective plane illumination microscopy.
However, there is no provision in the prior art for converting conventional microscopes to provide selective plane illumination microscopy. As such, there is a need in the art for a module that mounts a pair of objective lenses to a conventional microscope in order to provide selective plane illumination microscopy.